WazirX founder’s project raises $18.2m in seed round

The developers of the Shardeum blockchain startup, focused on sharding, raised $18.2m in seed funding at a $199m valuation.

📢 Shardeum raises $18.2M in seed round from 50+ investors

💪 Our VCs & institutional investors include @bigbrainvc @StruckCrypto @JaneStreetGroup @TheSpartanGroup @GhafCapital @DFG_OfficiaI @ForesightVen @JSquare_co @CogitentV @WemixNetwork @verisventures @Nestcoin @coingecko pic.twitter.com/RZfv0nLXGV

— Shardeum (@shardeum) October 18, 2022

In the round, more than 50 investors participated, including Spartan Group, Big Brain Holdings, Jane Street and Foresight Ventures. 

Shardeum is led by Nischal Shetty, founder of the Indian exchange WazirX, and blockchain architect Omar Saed. The developers are building a blockchain platform based on Proof-of-Stake, using the technology of dynamic sharding.

“Blockchain trilemma was a difficult problem. Scalability is the most important factor hindering broader adoption of cryptocurrencies in developing markets like India,” said Shetty.

According to him, in the coming years, 1 billion people will join Web3.

“We need a scalable blockchain that will permanently guarantee a one-cent fee while preserving decentralization. Shardeum aims to achieve this,” added the project co-founder.

Funds raised during the private token sale will be used to ramp up marketing efforts, expand the development team, and hold hackathons in India and the United States to spur ecosystem growth.

“I think they are trying to implement an interesting approach to sharding that increases TPS as new nodes are added,” said Balaji Srinivasan, former Coinbase CTO.

The mainnet launch is planned for the first quarter of next year. A public token sale is planned later.

Earlier, Vitalik Buterin stated that thanks to sharding and expanded use of Rollups, Ethereum throughput will reach 100,000 TPS.

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